Saturday, September 6

  • Movie Land


  • Jun 16, 2008 3:46 pm US/Eastern
    Robots

    Air Date: 7/5/08
    Plot Summary
    In a robot world, a young idealistic inventor travels to the big city to join his inspiration's company, only to find himself opposing its sinister new management. It's a cute movie. You'll like it. Trust me.

    Robots Cast
    Actor/Role
    Ewan McGregor/Rodney Copperbottom (voice)
    Greg Kinnear/Ratchet (voice)
    Robin Williams/Fender (voice)
    Mel Brooks/Bigweld (voice)
    Halle Berry/Cappy (voice)

    Robots Director
    Chris Wedge

    Trivia You Should Know (source: imdb.com)
    - Dave Andelman is a robot.
    - Rodney Copperbottom's design is inspired by an old Evinrude outboard motor in director Chris Wedge's garage, as well as on a Volkswagen van.
    - Chris Wedge reports on the commentary that Robin Williams performed the scene with Fender and Rodney attempting to get past Tim eight times in eight different accents, including as a Polish valet.
    - Dan Andelman once worked as a Polish valet in Ireland.
    - When trying to get into Bigweld Industries, the guard is based on the guard to the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz.
    - In the UK release of the movie some characters were voiced by British celebrities, and not the original US actors cast.

    Top 10 Hollywood Robots
    1. Terminator
    2. HAL9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey)
    3. KITT (Knight Rider)
    4. R2D2 (Star Wars)
    5. Sonny (I, Robot)
    6. Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)
    7a. Megatron (Transformers)
    7b. Optimus Prime (Transformers)
    8. Fembots (Austin Powers)
    9. ED-209 (RoboCop)
    10. Evil Bill & Ted (Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey)

     *Honorary mention: Vicki (Small Wonder)

     Movie Night Feature Haiku
    Robots freak me out.
    Appendages made of steel.
    Will you be my friend?

     A Movie Night Producer's Rant On Robots
    Let me start off by saying I hate robots. I don't mean to stereotype, but it's true. I don't like them at all. I trace this back to my childhood. First there was the Speak & Spell with that demonic voice that sounded like the computer was going to kill you if you didn't spell a word right. Then there were robots on TV. You had Vicki from Small Wonder…what do I need to say about that freak fest? Here you have a seemingly "regular" girl with a circuit board in her back. Like that's normal. Of course, you had KITT on Knight Rider which I kind of liked but I don't really consider a robot because it didn't really have any sort of human form whatsoever. Then there were cartoon robots galore but those don't really count. And like any spoiled child, I owned an Omnibot which I pretty much thought was the coolest thing in the world, but I got to control it and be its voice. That's what I like – I want to control my robots. But as the years passed, robot technology never really seemed to advance much past ROB, the weird Nintendo robot. Robot voices are still as creepy as ever. I thought we were experiencing the technological revolution? I thought by this point everyone would be riding around on a Segway and driving in flying cars and our kids would be "skating" on hover boards. But I feel we've regressed. "Retro" is in. Kids aren't flying anywhere; instead they have roller skates on their sneakers. Now we're stuck with the Roomba vacuum and talking animal heads in restaurants as pretty much our greatest robotic advancements. And I say, thank goodness. That's about as much robot as I can handle. Unless of course we're talking about cartoon robots – then all bets are off.